The present invention relates to a work flow management system, more particularly to a work flow management system for controlling a work flow of a circulation of electronic documents sent from a plurality of senders according to a predetermined route.
The Nikkei Computer magazine, No. 336, issued on May 2, 1994 on pages 57 to 67, describes a work flow system which supports a work to be done jointly by a group of people. Further, the xe2x80x9cThe electronic mail circulation method and the electronic mail circulation systemxe2x80x9d disclosed in the JP-A-4-77030 is known in the art. According to the above-described work flow systems, source of generation of electronic documents is limited to only one place, and the systems are controlled such that a single document is circulated along a predetermined route.
According to the prior-art work flow systems, the source of generation of electronic documents is limited to only one place and a single document is circulated along a predetermined route. According to these methods, however, it has been difficult to apply the systems to a complex work which involves a plurality of sources of generation of electronic documents in the work flow for one work and which requires a circulation of these electronic documents collectively or which requires an allocated circulation of once-circulated electronic documents to different positions taking different job roles, etc. For example, as described later as an embodiment of the present invention with reference to FIG. 2, a complex work in the insurance assessment work involves an integration of documents from a plurality of generation sources of documents, such as application sheets from insurance applicants, medical certificates by doctors or investigation sheets by operators, and circulation of these documents in one, and further a change of assessment staff according to insurance amount and different procedures to be taken between an approved case and a non-approved case as a result of assessment.
It has been difficult to apply the conventional work flow systems to the above-described works because of the lack of the following functions in these systems.
(1) a function for defining a plurality of generation sources of documents, or senders.
(2) a function for integrating electronic documents sent from a plurality of senders into one circulation material.
(3) a function for dividing one circulation material into a plurality of circulation materials.
(4) a function for circulating a circulation material by branching to one of a plurality of circulation destinations according to the value of attribute records attached to the circulation material.
(5) a function for broadcasting a circulation material to a plurality of circulation destination and for recovering the broadcasted circulation material.
(6) a function for controlling the timing of circulating of a circulation material according to time conditions.
(7) a function for changing circulation destinations according to time conditions and status conditions.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a work flow management system which has the above-described control functions in a work flow system and which can cope with works having complex work flows.
In order to achieve the above object, a method according to the present invention for solving the above problems will be explained below.
A series of flow of electronic documents which is a circulation of electronic documents to a plurality of users to perform one work is called a work flow. When a process from an entry of an electronic document to an end of processing based on this work flow is handled as one work unit, this is called a transaction. According to the present invention, a work flow management system is provided which has a work flow defined and stored in advance in the storing unit and which efficiently circulates circulation materials from a plurality of circulation materials based on a work flow management technique that controls a sequential circulation of electronic documents from a circulation originator to circulation destinations by referring to the work flow definition. In order to achieve the above system, in the basic structure of the present invention, a circulation material management table is provided corresponding to each electronic document, and control data for showing a send request is linked with the circulation material management table and control data in a circulation tray is linked with the circulation management table by link information respectively so that the circulation is controlled by only changing the link information even if the circulation destinations are changed.
The operation of the above-described structure will be explained below. A relevant pointer between a send request queue, control data placed on a circulation tray and the circulation material management table is expressed by an inter-object link function. With this arrangement, it is possible to retrieve and update only the data which needs to be updated and it is possible to achieve a high-speed circulation control. Particularly, in the case of circulating circulation materials sent from a plurality of senders to one circulation destination by integrating these circulation materials together, it is possible to efficiently wait for circulation materials by providing a separate management table which is linked with the circulation material table that corresponds to each electronic document.
Other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the embodiments of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.